Heroes: A New Low 

 

‘Oh, but I’m always crashing 

In the same car’ 

 
One of the Tories largest donors,  Frank Hester, is alleged to have said of Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP; ‘It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV and you’re just like, I hate, you just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot.’ 

In response, whilst Michael Gove, the cabinet minister responsible for government’s new definition of extremism, described the remarks as ‘horrific‘, he was exercising ‘Christian forgiveness‘ after the businessman had ‘shown contrition’.   

Oh, well, that’s alright, then be as racist as you like, say sorry, and no problem.  

So forgiving was Michael that he suggested Hester’s comments would not be deemed extremism. Of course, that is to be expected, Hester is white, votes and donates vast amounts to the Tories. What’s not to like? 

Sailesh Mehta, a barrister and founding member of the Bar Human Rights Committee, said Hester’s comments, if as reported, were ‘capable of fitting the ingredients of the criminal offence [of stirring up racial hatred] created by the Public Order Act‘. Whilst this act is rarely used because of free speech considerations, he added: ‘Political leaders are increasingly using incendiary language, which appears to give licence to their followers to be ever more shrill in their rhetoric. It is only a matter of time before this worrying spiral triggers such violence or threat of violence that the police and Crime Prosecution Service will be forced to act.’ 
 

‘you just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot’

 
Shabna Begum, the interim CEO of the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust called it accurately, saying; ‘So we’ve got on the one hand, this really heavy-handed, very blunt approach toward black and minority ethnic groups in terms of what they can say when they are committing hate crimes versus here we’ve got this powerful white man making a really baldly racist statement about hating a black woman, wanting her to be shot and we’re still debating whether it’s racist or not.’ 

This whole sorry saga serves only to further demonstrate how far the Tory party has fallen post-Brexit, and just how much the hard-right are shaping the both the party’s thinking and policies. 

Last year, in ‘Europe and the New Right‘, I talked about how mainstream parties can become infected by hard-right fringe parties and, in desperation, adopt their policies bringing extremism into mainstream politics. 

In addition, as I have previously warned, this will be the most unpleasant election yet. The Tories have previously been able to rely on the perception that they are good with money, and offer low taxation. Liz Truss put paid to any claim the Tories had regarding economic competence, and taxation is now at its highest sustained level on record. All they are left with is the race card, I would be surprised if Hester’s remarks are the end of this subject. 

Sunak’s intention of dumping would-be asylum seekers in Rwanda is a sign of desperation, aimed at showing a certain group  of voters how tough he is prepared to be on the subject, rather than a workable, coherent policy. Tories, such as  Ken Clarke, the former chancellor, said earlier this year that he cannot support the legislation because overruling a Supreme Court judgment would be a ‘very dangerous constitutional provision‘.   
 

‘Sunak’s intention of dumping would-be asylum seekers in Rwanda is a sign of desperation’

 
Little Rishi’s latest hobbyhorse is ‘extremists‘, what he means is those that don’t vote tory and Muslims. People marching in support of a ceasefire in Gaza in the main aren’t extremists they are just people who believe war is wrong. They aren’t ‘hate‘ marches, even the Met, who have been condemned as ‘systemically racist’, can see that. All of this is little more than the Tories underlying Islamophobia, which, as the far-right controls the narrative, is becoming more prevalent. 

Their dominance is becoming increasingly obvious. The day after the Hester / Abbot story broke, Sunak initially described his comments as wrong and unacceptable, before later, and seemingly grudgingly, saying they were racist. 

Of course, Rishi needs to tread carefully, there are likely Tories that secretly don’t disagree with Hester, then there is the £10m donation, and, lest we forget, the helicopter flights Rishi so enjoys. 

It doesn’t have to be like this, and in years gone by, when the party had dignity and a moral compass, it wasn’t.  

When Enoch Powell, then shadow defence secretary, delivered his ‘rivers of blood‘ speech against immigration, the then Tory leader, Edward Heath, was immediately bombarded with shadow cabinet resignation threats after. Whilst this was a much bigger crisis for the Tories than Hester comments, Heath sacked Powell in less time than it took Sunak to decide it was more important to keep hold of Hester’s money. 

The situation Sunak finds himself in is very different to Heath , who led a party that was, by and large, behind him, whereas Sunak leads a party beset by factions. With the hard-right being the most vocal and dominant faction,  Sunak lacks the authority to condemn Hester outright, let alone return his cash, assuming he even wants to. 
 

‘Heath sacked Powell in less time than it took Sunak to decide it was more important to keep hold of Hester’s money’

 
This saga illustrates the hollowness of his stand against hate and extremism. Clearly the hard-right is growing in influence, as is the case in many other European countries. All of them have a common theme; economic stagnation, and a feeling of being left behind, typified by the ‘Red Wall’. This a common theme that the column has long majored on, most recently in ‘Disappointed and Let Down‘, and ‘Heaven Knows I Miserable Now’ 

The next question is, where does these people’s political allegiance go? 

Originally, they were Labour voters, but, in 2019, emboldened by Brexit and ‘getting it done’, they were further seduced by Johnson’s promise to ‘level-up’. Today, they likely feel let down by both major parties.  

On Monday in ‘Me I go from one extreme to another‘, I covered Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform, and I suspect in the next few months we will be talking about more Tory MPs making the same trip. 

Whilst not commenting directly, Reforms’ leader, Richard Tice,  said he would be ‘surprised‘ if no one else followed suit. While some Tory MPs said they believed the defection would not be repeated, one senior backbencher on the right of the party said they anticipated others could follow; ‘I think that the red wall is pretty demoralised at the moment, not least because of what Lee has just done and I think that there will be some people from the same part of the country who might well decide to go.’ 

 It is here that extremism bubbles away unnoticed. Brexit may not be the sole cause of extremism, but it provided the oxyen that helped it enter mainstream politics. 
 

‘Brexit may not be the sole cause of extremism, but it provided the oxyen that helped it enter mainstream politics’

 
Jo Cox was killed because she was campaigning  for ‘Remain’. Her assassin, Thomas Mair, saw himself as a soldier in a liberation struggle against foreign powers that conspired to swamp white Britain with migrants. Whilst he was clearly deranged, his views were based on the case for Brexit made by mainstream leave campaigners. Remainers were still being called traitors, quislings and saboteurs in parliament and the press for years after Cox’s death. 

The murderer of David Amess claimed his actions we because Amess voted in favour of airstrikes in Syria and for membership of Conservative Friends of Israel. The basis of this is protesters against UK foreign policy, accusing MPs who do not explicitly denounce government action of moral complicity in the deaths of Muslims in the Middle East.  

There is clearly a need in any democracy to monitor extreme views. However, paradoxically in a free society there will always be a tiny minority who believe things that would, if enacted as majority rule, extinguish freedom for all. In essence, democracy allows the virus of anti-democracy to incubate in the trusts that it won’t spread. Put another way, the value of mutual tolerance provides a form of herd immunity against the politics of division and hate. 
 

‘parties have to respect and accept that the institutions of the state and the courts will keep the whole system honest’

 
For this to work, democratic norms, such as government and opposition recognising legitimate dissent from fellow politicians and the electorate. In effect, parties have to respect and accept that the institutions of the state and the courts will keep the whole system honest. 

In recent times this has failed. Boris Johnson clearly didn’t recognise the unwritten codes of British democracy when he dissolved parliament after his Brexit plans were thwarted. Equally, Tories who cared about the rule of law would not support a bill to declare that certain facts about Rwanda, asserted by the supreme court, are no longer true if the government prefers them not to be. 

This is why, in any democracy, it can never be as simple as the pretence of simply fulfilling ‘the will of the people’. Moreover, they would not say that ‘the whole democratic system is rigged‘, as Lee Anderson did when defecting to Reform UK this week. 
 

‘democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

 
As Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947: ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ 

What Sunak, Gove et al miss, perhaps deliberately, is that their own party is heading into a dark, extreme, far-right direction. Within there are protagonists whose comments who will not be listed as a threat to British values under Michael Gove auspices. 

Their party has been in-power for too long, and is subsumed by the arrogance of the expectation of continuing to do so, as a result they are reduced to panic measures. Their actions are symptomatic of looking everywhere for the problem rather than in the mirror. 

‘I’ll be your mirror 

Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know’ 

Some familiar themes from Philip, but presented with the added gusto of the fact that his predictions – nay forebodings – have come to pass:

This really was an unpleasant piece to write, and an even more unpleasant reflection of what the county has become over the life of this column.

I don’t want to dwell on this whole extremism / racism any longer than necessary; however, I turned on he lunchtime news slightly late and caught Gove as he was saying, ….”who promote neo-Nazi ideology, argue for forced repatriation, a white ethno-state and the targeting of minority groups for intimidation, are precisely the type of groups about which we should be concerned and whose activities we will assess against the new definition.”

I thought he was talking about his own party, but it turns out to be……“organisations such as the British National Socialist Movement and Patriotic Alternative”.

One piece of rare good news is the fact that legislation is imminent that will automatically overturn convictions of theft, fraud and false accounting that were handed down in connection with Post Office business during the period between 1996 and 2018.

The government will also extend compensation to those who were never convicted or took part in legal action against the Post Office. Operators who were investigated but not convicted will become eligible for £75,000 redress payments via the Post Office’s Horizon shortfall scheme (HSS).

Those who have their convictions quashed can receive an interim payment of £163,000 within 28 days of applying, and then choose between receiving a fixed compensation payment totalling £600,000 or having their case considered on an individual basis.

Much praise must be given to James Arbuthnot, a Tory peer and leading campaigner, and also Kevan Jones, the Labour MP who has campaigned for post office operators since 2009, amongst many others. Special praise must be given to the indefatigable Alan Bates who has done so much to keep the campaign going. Personally, I think he should be made a Lord, he is just the sort of person we want opining on the government.

The saddest thing is that, despite so many people’s efforts, it needed a TV drama to highlight the injustice

As for the culprits at Fujitsu and the Post Office, criminal charges should be forthcoming, but they won’t be.

Continuing with the theme of s**t,  residents of a new development of 1,500 homes in Horley, Surrey, have recently set up a WhatsApp group, whose title illustrates a less attractive feature of the community:” Stop the Poo.”

The group was created in desperation as residents sought answers from Thames Water after a winter of storms that exposed the terrible state of the sewage treatment works on the River Mole at Horley, which abuts the new development.

“When it rains, not only does raw sewage pour into the river via the storm overflows, but the sewage overtops the storm tanks and flows on to the public footpath,” said Keith Barlow, the chair of the Westvale Park residents’ association. “Sewage floods over the footpath and into the recreation area where people walk with their children and dogs. I have seen solid waste floating past through the perimeter fence.”

Just checking, do we still live in a developed, civilised country?

Musically, as the Tories stoop to a new low we start with Bowie’s “Always crashing in the same car” from the album “Low”. To finish, and dedicated to Rishi and Gove, the Velvet Undergrounds’ hauntingly beautiful “I’ll be your mirror”. I understand that Michael is more a pill-head who likes raving to trance but that doesn’t really have lyrics. Enjoy!

@coldwarsteve
 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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